Ireland to Hold Abortion Referendum Next Year

Abortion-rights advocates outside Parliament in Dublin in 2013. A vote on Ireland’s constitutional ban on abortion will be held next year.CreditCreditPeter Muhly/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

By Ed O’Loughlin

Sept. 26, 2017

Ireland will vote in a referendum next year on whether to lift or ease the country’s constitutional ban on abortion, one of the most restrictive such laws in the Western world.

Leo Varadkar, the Irish prime minister, announced on Tuesday that the vote would be held in May or June on the prohibition, which has been bitterly contested. Polls suggest that a majority of voters approve relaxation of the law, but they also show little support for allowing abortion on request.

Should Mr. Varadkar’s government propose constitutional wording that is too liberal, or too conservative, the proposed changes could be assailed from both sides. If Ireland’s recent history is any guide, the campaign will be fiercely fought.

Debate will center on the Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution, passed by a two-thirds majority in 1983, which gives an unborn child a right to life equal to that of its mother, effectively banning abortion.

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Anti-abortion protesters in Dublin in 2013. The Eighth Amendment, which bans abortion, was passed by a two-thirds majority in 1983 but has been repeatedly challenged.CreditPeter Muhly/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Irish women seeking abortions, even in cases of rape, incest and fatal or severe fetal abnormalities, must travel abroad, and many of them go to Britain. Official figures show that at least 3,400 Irish women traveled to England and Wales for abortions in 2015.

Passed when the Republic of Ireland was widely seen as the world’s most conservative Roman Catholic country, the Eighth Amendment has been challenged repeatedly in the decades since, both by abortion-rights groups and by an increasingly liberal citizenry angered by scandals arising from the ban.

After the “X Case” of 1992, in which a 14-year-old rape victim was prevented from traveling to Britain for an abortion, voters passed a constitutional amendment that left the ban intact but recognized a woman’s right to travel abroad. Another amendment, also passed in 1992, permitted Irish women to obtain information on abortion services overseas, which had been prohibited by the state.

Much of the impetus for the new constitutional effort stems from the case of Savita Halappanavar, 31, an Indian-born dentist who died of sepsis after miscarrying in a Galway hospital in 2012. Having learned that her 17-week-old fetus would not live, Ms. Halappanavr repeatedly asked the staff to terminate the pregnancy to relieve her own worsening condition. She was told that her pregnancy could not be terminated while the fetus had a heartbeat.

An inquiry determined that recent interpretations of the Eighth Amendment had found therapeutic terminations to be permissible, but the medical staff’s uncertainty over the law and the lack of clear legislation contributed to a delay in her treatment.

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Leo Varadkar, Ireland’s prime minister. His own position on the constitutional effort is somewhat ambiguous.CreditDaniel Leal-Olivas/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The case helped build momentum for a citizens’ constitutional assembly, which this year recommended that the Eighth Amendment be repealed or amended, and that legislation be introduced to allow abortion, effectively on request.

A number of social and economic factors have made contemporary Ireland a more liberal country that the one that passed the Eighth Amendment. Not least among these is an erosion in the status of the Roman Catholic Church, weakened by scandals over the sexual abuse of children and the treatment of marginalized women in bleak church-run laundries, where many died and were buried anonymously.

The 1983 campaign to ban abortion, backed by bishops and Catholic lay groups, represented the high-water mark for institutional Catholic power in Ireland, coming just four years after Pope John Paul II drew huge crowds in the first papal visit to the country. While a significant majority describe themselves as Catholic, few now adhere to the church’s teachings in matters like divorce, contraception, sex outside marriage or gay rights.

An Irish Times pollin May showed that large majorities supported legal changes allowing abortion in cases of rape or serious risk to the physical or mental health of the mother, but less than a quarter of people supported changes making it legal under all circumstances.

Leaders of the Repeal the Eight campaign are likely to be buoyed by another liberal constitutional effort, the 2015 referendum that legalized same-sex marriage, though the country’s well-organized anti-abortion activists will find much in the polls to encourage their own hopes.

Traditionally cautious, Ireland’s mainstream politicians may huddle as close as they can to the middle ground. Mr. Varadkar’s own position is somewhat ambiguous. Though he came out as gay during the same-sex marriage campaign, Mr. Varadkar had sounded conservative notes earlier in his political career, opposing abortion and same-sex adoption.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: Irish Near a Referendum Over Strict Abortion Ban. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe